Continuing with my previous post‘s theme of “the truth about why it’s taking us so long” (summary: it’s because we don’t know what we’re doing), I have another story for you. Last time it was about me and my inexperience. This time it’s about Chris. Chris, and his everlasting love of this toilet:

Okay, maybe not. Chris is not hugging that toilet out of affection. He’s installing it. Right before I told him we had to uninstall it…and change some of the tiles underneath it.Continue Reading

Three days of tiling and we’re almost done. We finished laying all of the whole tiles, which means we left the slowest part — cutting — for last. And baby, there are A LOT of cuts. Because I couldn’t be satisfied with simply laying square tiles on a diagonal, which pretty much doubles the number of cuts you have to do and makes things rather difficult. Oh no. For my very first tiling project, I chose to lay the tiles on a diagonal AND use a “running bond” or brick pattern.

We’re still playing in the mud. Drywall mud, that is. Believe it or not, we’re cruising. Things are going quickly, although I’m sorry to say that they’re not very photogenic. We’ve finished up the second coat of joint compound, and this is what the kitchen looks like:

…which, unfortunately, doesn’t look much different from the first coat:

Oh, happy day! My long-awaited, much-anticipated backsplash tiles arrived today! These little puppies have been the source of a surprising amount of anxiety, considering I only had to wait 3 weeks, and we haven’t even started demo yet.

(Not sure that bodes well for my anxiety levels during the renovation, when we start hitting actual delays.)